SOME CYNICAL ASPERSIONS UPON THE BENEFITS OF TRAVEL
The traveller newly returned from foreign lands was a great butt for the
satirists. In Elizabethan times his bows and tremendous politeness, his
close-fitting black clothes from Venice, his French accent, his finicky
refinements, such as perfumes and pick-tooths, were highly offensive to
the plain Englishman. One was always sure of an appreciative audience if
he railed at the "disguised garments and desperate hats" of the
"affectate traveller" how; his attire spoke French or Italian, and his
gait cried "behold me!" how he spoke his own language with shame and
loathing.[100] "You shall see a dapper Jacke, that hath beene but over
at Deepe,[101] wring his face round about, as a man would stir up a
mustard-pot, and talke English through the teeth, like ... Monsieur
Mingo de Moustrap."[102] Nash was one of the best at describing some who
had lived in France for half-a-dozen years, "and when they came home,
they have hyd a little wéerish leane face under a broad French hat, kept
a terrible coyle with the dust in the stréete in their long cloaks of
gray paper, and spoke English strangely. Naught else have they profited
by their travell, save learnt to distinguish of the true Burdeaux Grape,
and know a cup of neate Gascoygne wine from wine of Orleance; yea, and
peradventure this also, to esteeme of the poxe as a pimple, to weare a
velvet patch on their face, and walke melancholy with their armes
folded."[103]
The Frenchified traveller came in for a good share of satire, but darker
things were said of the Italianate Englishman. He was an atheist--a
creature hitherto unknown in England--who boldly laughed to scorn both
Protestant and Papist. He mocked the Pope, railed on Luther, and liked
none, but only himself.[104] "I care not," he said, "what you talk to me
of God, so as I may have the prince and the laws of the realm on my
side."[105] In politics he allied himself with the Papists, they being
more of his way of living than the Puritans, but he was faithless to all
parties.[106] In private life he was vicious, and practised "such
villainy as is abominable to declare," for in Italy he had served
Circes, who turns men into beasts.[107] "But I am afraid," says Ascham,
"that over many of our travellers unto Italy do not eschew the way to
Circe's Court: but go and ryde and runne and flie thether, they make
great hast to cum to her; they make great sute to serve her: yea, I
could point out some with my finger that never had gone out of England,
but onlie to serve Circes in Italie. Vanitie and vice and any licence to
ill living in England was counted stale and rude unto them."[108]
It is likely that some of these accusations were true. Italy more than
any other country charmed the Elizabethan Englishman, partly because the
climate and the people and the look of things were so unlike his own
grey home. Particularly Venice enchanted him. The sun, the sea, the
comely streets, "so clean that you can walk in a Silk Stockin and Sattin
Slippes,"[109] the tall palaces with marble balconies, and golden-haired
women, the flagellants flogging themselves, the mountebanks, the Turks,
the stately black-gowned gentlemen, were new and strange, and satisfied
his sense of romance. Besides, the University of Padua was still one of
the greatest universities in Europe. Students from all nations crowded
to it. William Thomas describes the "infinite resorte of all nacions
that continually is seen there. And I thinke verilie, that in one region
of all the worlde againe, are not halfe so many straungers as in Italie;
specially of gentilmen, whose resorte thither is principallie under
pretence of studie ... all kyndes of vertue maie there be learned: and
therfore are those places accordyngly furnisshed: not of suche students
alone, as moste commonly are brought up in our universitees (meane mens
children set to schole in hope to live upon hyred learnyng) but for the
more parte of noble mens sonnes, and of the best gentilmen: that studie
more for knowledge and pleasure than for curiositee or luker: ... This
last wynter living in Padoa, with diligent serche I learned, that the
noumbre of scholers there was little lesse than fiftene hundreth;
whereof I dare saie, a thousande at the lest were gentilmen."[110]
The life of a student at Padua was much livelier than the monastic
seclusion of an English university. He need not attend many lectures,
for, as Thomas Hoby explains, after a scholar has been elected by the
rectors, "He is by his scholarship bound to no lectures, nor nothing
elles but what he lyst himselfe to go to."[111] So being a gentleman and
not a clerk, he was more likely to apply himself to fencing or riding:
For at Padua "there passeth no shrof-tide without rennyng at the tilte,
tourneiyng, fighting at the barriers and other like feates of armes,
handled and furnisshed after the best sort: the greatest dooers wherof
are scholers."[112]
Then, too, the scholar diversified his labours by excursions to Venice,
in one of those passenger boats which plied daily from Padua, of which
was said "that the boat shall bee drowned, when it carries neither
Monke, nor Student, nor Curtesan.... the passengers being for the most
part of these kinds"[113] and, as Moryson points out, if he did not, by
giving offence, receive a dagger in his ribs from a fellow-student, he
was likely to have pleasant discourse on the way.[114] Hoby took several
trips from Padua to Venice to see such things as the "lustie yong Duke
of Ferrandin, well accompanied with noble menn and gentlemen ... running
at the ring with faire Turks and cowrsars, being in a maskerie after the
Turkishe maner, and on foote casting of eggs into the wyndowes among the
ladies full of sweete waters and damaske Poulders," or like the Latin
Quarter students who frequent "La Morgue," went to view the body of a
gentleman slain in a feud, laid out in state in his house--"to be seen
of all men."[115] In the outlandish mixture of nations swarming at
Venice, a student could spend all day watching mountebanks, and bloody
street fights, and processions. In the renowned freedom of that city
where "no man marketh anothers dooynges, or meddleth with another mans
livyng,"[116] it was no wonder if a young man fresh from an English
university and away from those who knew him, was sometimes "enticed by
lewd persons:" and, once having lost his innocence, outdid even the
students of Padua. For, as Greene says, "as our wits be as ripe as any,
so our willes are more ready than they all, to put into effect any of
their licentious abuses."[117] Thus arose the famous proverb, "An
Englishman Italianate is a devil incarnate."
Hence the warnings against Circes by even those authors most loud in
praise of travel. Lipsius bids his noble pupil beware of Italian women:
" ... inter fæminas, formæ conspicuæ, sed lascivæ et procaces."[118]
Turler must acknowledge "an auntient complaint made by many that our
countrymen usually bring three thinges with them out of Italye: a
naughty conscience, an empty purse, and a weak stomache: and many times
it chaunceth so indeede." For since "youth and flourishing yeeres are
most commonly employed in traveill, which of their owne course and
condicion are inclined unto vice, and much more earnestly imbrace the
same if it be enticed thereto," ... "many a time pleasures make a man
not thinke on his returne," ... but he is caught by the songs of
Mermaids, "so to returne home with shame and shame enough."[119]
It was necessary also to warn the traveller against those more harmless
sins which we have already mentioned: against an arrogant bearing on his
return to his native land, or a vanity which prompted him at all times
to show that he had been abroad, and was not like the common herd.
Perhaps it was an intellectual affectation of atheism or a cultivated
taste for Machiavelli with which he was inclined to startle his
old-fashioned countrymen. Almost the only book Sir Edward Unton seems to
have brought back with him from Venice was the _Historie of Nicolo
Machiavelli_, Venice, 1537. On the title page he has written:
"Macchavelli Maxima / Qui nescit dissimulare / nescit vivere / Vive et
vivas / Edw. Unton. /"[120] Perhaps it was only his display of Italian
clothes--"civil, because black, and comely because fitted to the
body,"[121] or daintier table manners than Englishmen used which called
down upon him the ridicule of his enemies. No doubt there was in the
returned traveller a certain degree of condescension which made him
disagreeable--especially if he happened to be a proud and insolent
courtier, who attracted the Queen's notice by his sharpened wits and
novelties of discourse, or if he were a vain boy of the sort that
cumbered the streets of London with their rufflings and struttings.
In making surmises as to whom Ascham had in his mind's eye when he said
that he knew men who came back from Italy with "less learning and worse
manners," I guessed that one might be Arthur Hall, the first translator
of Homer into English. Hall was a promising Grecian at Cambridge, and
began his translation with Ascham's encouragement.[122] Between 1563 and
1568, when Ascham was writing _The Scolemaster_, Hall, without finishing
for a degree, or completing the Homer, went to Italy. It would have
irritated Ascham to have a member of St John's throw over his task and
his degree to go gadding. Certainly Hall's after life bore out Ascham's
forebodings as to the value of foreign travel. On his return he spent a
notorious existence in London until the consequences of a tavern brawl
turned him out of Parliament. I might dwell for a moment on Hall's
curious account of this latter affair, because it is one of the few
utterances we have by an acknowledged Italianate Englishman--of a
certain sort.
Hall, apparently, was one of those gallants who ruffled about
Elizabethan London and used
"To loove to play at Dice
To sware his blood and hart
To face it with a Ruffins look
And set his Hat athwart."[123]
The humorists throw a good deal of light on such "yong Jyntelmen." So
does Fleetwood, the Recorder of London, to whom they used to run when
they were arrested for debt, or for killing a carman, making as their
only apology, "I am a Jyntelman, and being a Jyntelman, I am not thus to
be used at a slave and a colion's hands."[124] Hall, writing in the
third person, in the assumed character of a friend, describes himself as
"a man not wholly unlearned, with a smacke of the knowledge of diverse
tongues ... furious when he is contraried ... as yourselfe is witnesse
of his dealings at Rome, at Florence, in the way between that and
Bollonia ... so implacable if he conceyve an injurie, as Sylla will
rather be pleased with Marius, than he with his equals, in a maner for
offences grown of tryffles.... Also spending more tyme in sportes, and
following the same, than is any way commendable, and the lesse, bycause,
I warrant you, the summes be great are dealte for." [125]
This terrible person, on the 16th of December 1573, at Lothbury, in
London, at a table of twelve pence a meal, supped with some merchants
and a certain Melchisedech Mallerie. Dice were thrown on the board, and
in the course of play Mallerie "gave the lye with harde wordes in heate
to one of the players." "Hall sware (as he will not sticke to lende you
an othe or two), to throw Mallerie out at the window. Here Etna smoked,
daggers were a-drawing ... but the goodman lamented the case for the
slaunder, that a quarrel should be in his house, ... so ... the matter
was ended for this fitte."
But a certain Master Richard Drake, attending on my Lord of Leicester,
took pains first to warn Hall to take heed of Mallerie at play, and then
to tell Mallerie that Hall said he used "lewde practices at cards." The
next day at "Poules"[126] came Mallerie to Hall and "charged him very
hotly, that he had reported him to be a cousiner of folkes at Mawe."
Hall, far from showing that fury which he described as his
characteristic, denied the charge with meekness. He said he was patient
because he was bound to keep the peace for dark disturbances in the
past. Mallerie said it was because he was a coward.
Mallerie continued to say so for months, until before a crowd of
gentlemen at the "ordinary" of one Wormes, his taunts were so unbearable
that Hall crept up behind him and tried to stab him in the back. There
was a general scuffle, some one held down Hall, the house grew full in a
moment with Lord Zouche, gentlemen, and others, while "Mallerie with a
great shreke ranne with all speede out of the doores, up a paire of
stayres, and there aloft used most harde wordes againste Mr Hall."
Hall, who had cut himself--and nobody else--nursed his wound indoors for
some days, during which time friends brought word that Mallerie would
"shewe him an Italian tricke, intending thereby to do him some secret
and unlooked for mischief." Then, with "a mufle half over his face,"
Hall took post-horses to his home in Lincolnshire. Business called him,
he tells the reader. There was no ground whatever for Mallerie to say he
fled in disguise.
After six months, he ventured to return to London and be gay again. He
dined at "James Lumelies--the son, as it is said, of old M. Dominicke,
born at Genoa, of the losse of whose nose there goes divers tales,"--and
coming by a familiar gaming-house on his way back to his lodgings, he
"fell to with the rest."
But there is no peace for him. In comes Mallerie--and with insufferably
haughty gait and countenance, brushes by. Hall tries a pleasant saunter
around Poules with his friend Master Woodhouse: "comes Mallerie again,
passing twice or thrice by Hall, with great lookes and extraordinary
rubbing him on the elbowes, and spurning three or four times a Spaniel
of Mr Woodhouses following his master and Master Hall." Hall mutters to
his servants, "Jesus can you not knocke the boyes head and the wall
together, sith he runnes a-bragging thus?" His three servants go out of
the church by the west door: when Mallerie stalks forth they set upon
him and cut him down the cheek.
We will not follow the narrative through the subsequent lawsuit brought
by Mallerie against Hall's servants, the trial presided over by Recorder
Fleetwood, the death of Mallerie, who "departed well leanyng to the olde
Father of Rome, a dad whome I have heard some say Mr Hall doth not hate"
or Hall's subsequent expulsion from Parliament. This is enough to show
the sort of harmless, vain braggarts some of these "Italianates" were,
and how easily they acquired the reputation of being desperate fellows.
Mallerie's lawyer at the trial charged Hall with "following the revenge
with an Italian minde learned at Rome."
Among other Italianified Cambridge men whom Ascham might well have
noticed were George Acworth and William Barker. Acworth had lived abroad
during Mary's reign, studying civil law in France and Italy. When
Elizabeth came to the throne he was elected public orator of the
University of Cambridge, but through being idle, dissolute, and a
drunkard, he lost all his preferments in England.[127] Barker, or
Bercher, who was educated at St John's or Christ's, was abroad at the
same time as Ascham, who may have met him as Hoby did in Italy.[128]
Barker seems to have been an idle person--he says that after travels "my
former fancye of professenge nothinge partycularly was verye muche
encreased"[129]--and a papistical one, for on the accession of Mary he
came home to serve the Duke of Norfolk, whose Catholic plots he
betrayed, under torture, in 1571. It was then that the Duke bitterly
dubbed him an "Italianfyd Inglyschemane," equal in faithlessness to "a
schamlesse Scote";[130] _i.e._ the Bishop of Ross, another witness.
Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford, famous for his rude
behaviour to Sir Philip Sidney, whom he subsequently tried to dispatch
with hired assassins after the Italian manner,[131] might well have been
one of the rising generation of courtiers whom Ascham so deplored. In
Ascham's lifetime he was already a conspicuous gallant, and by 1571, at
the age of twenty-two, he was the court favourite. The friends of the
Earl of Rutland, keeping him informed of the news while he was
fulfilling in Paris those heavy duties of observation which Cecil mapped
out for him, announce that "There is no man of life and agility in every
respect in Court, but the Earl of Oxford."[132] And a month afterwards,
"Th' Erle of Oxenforde hath gotten hym a wyffe--or at the leste a wyffe
hath caught hym--that is Mrs Anne Cycille, whearunto the Queen hath
gyven her consent, the which hathe causyd great wypping, waling, and
sorowful chere, of those that hoped to have hade that golden daye."[133]
Ascham did not live to see the development of this favorite into an
Italianate Englishman, but Harrison's invective against the going of
noblemen's sons into Italy coincides with the return of the Earl from a
foreign tour which seems to have been ill-spent.
At the very time when the Queen "delighted more in his personage and his
dancing and valiantness than any other,"[134] Oxford betook himself to
Flanders--without licence. Though his father-in-law Burghley had him
brought back to the indignant Elizabeth, the next year he set forth
again and made for Italy. From Siena, on January 3rd, 1574-5, he writes
to ask Burghley to sell some of his land so as to disburden him of his
debts, and in reply to some warning of Burghley's that his affairs in
England need attention, replies that since his troubles are so many at
home, he has resolved to continue his travels.[135] Eight months
afterwards, from Italy, he begs Burghley's influence to procure him a
licence to continue his travels a year longer, stating as his reason an
exemplary wish to see more of Germany. (In another letter also[136] he
assures Cecil that he means to acquaint himself with Sturmius--that
educator of youth so highly approved of by Ascham.) "As to Italy, he is
glad he has seen it, but cares not ever to see it again, unless to serve
his prince or country." The reason they have not heard from him this
past summer is that his letters were sent back because of the plague in
the passage. He did not know this till his late return to Venice. He has
been grieved with a fever. The letter concludes with a mention that he
has taken up of Baptista Nigrone 500 crowns, which he desires repaid
from the sale of his lands, and a curt thanks for the news of his wife's
delivery.[137]
From Paris, after an interval of six months, he declares his pleasure at
the news of his being a father, but makes no offer to return to England.
Rather he intends to go back to Venice. He "may pass two or three months
in seeing Constantinople and some part of Greece."[138]
However, Burghley says, "I wrote to Pariss to hym to hasten hym
homewards," and in April 1576, he landed at Dover in an exceedingly
sulky mood. He refused to see his wife, and told Burghley he might take
his daughter into his own house again, for he was resolved "to be rid of
the cumber."[139] He accused his father-in-law of holding back money due
to him, although Burghley states that Oxford had in one year £5700.[140]
Considering that Robert Sidney, afterwards Earl of Leicester, had only
£1OO a year for a tour abroad,[141] and that Sir Robert Dallington
declares £200 to be quite enough for a gentleman studying in France or
Italy--including pay for a servant--and that any more would be
"superfluous and to his hurte,"[142] it will be seen that the Earl of
Oxford had £5500 "to his hurte."
Certain results of his travel were pleasing to his sovereign, however.
For he was the first person to import to England "gloves, sweete bagges,
a perfumed leather Jerkin, and other pleasant things."[143] The Queen
was so proud of his present of a pair of perfumed gloves, trimmed with
"foure Tufts or Roses of coloured Silk" that she was "pictured with
those Gloves upon her hands, and for many yeeres after, it was called
the Earle of Oxford's perfume."[144] His own foreign and fashionable
apparel was ridiculed by Gabriel Harvey, in the much-quoted description
of an Italianate Englishman, beginning:
"A little apish hat couched faste to the pate, like an oyster."[145]
Arthur Hall and the Earl of Oxford will perhaps serve to show that many
young men pointed out as having returned the worse for their liberty to
see the world, were those who would have been very poor props to society
had they never left their native land. Weak and vain striplings of
entirely English growth escaped the comment attracted by a sinner with
strange garments and new oaths. For in those garments themselves lay an
offence to the commonwealth. I need only refer to the well-known
jealousy, among English haberdashers and milliners, of the superior
craft of Continental workmen, behind whom English weavers lagged: Henry
the Eighth used to have to wear hose cut out of pieces of cloth--on that
leg of which he was so proud--unless "by great chance there came a paire
of Spanish silke stockings from Spaine."[146] Knit worsted stockings
were not made in England till 1554, when an apprentice "chanced to see a
pair of knit worsted stockings in the lodging of an Italian merchant
that came from Mantua."[147] Harrison's description of England breathes
an animosity to foreign clothes, plainly founded on commercial jealousy:
"Neither was it ever merrier in England than when an Englishman was
known abroad by his own cloth, and contented himself at home with his
fine carsey hosen, and a mean slop: his coat, gown, and cloak of brown,
blue, or puke, with some pretty furniture of velvet or of fur, and a
doublet of sad tawny, or black velvet, or other comely silk, without
such cuts and garish colours, as are worn in these days, and never
brought in but by the consent of the French, who think themselves the
gayest men when they have most diversities of rags and change of colours
about them."[148]
Wrapped up with economic acrimony there was a good deal of the hearty
old English hatred of a Frenchman, or a Spaniard, or any foreigner,
which was always finding expression. Either it was the 'prentices who
rioted, or some rude fellow who pulls up beside the carriage of the
Spanish ambassador, snatches the ambassador's hat off his head and
"rides away with it up the street as fast as he could, the people going
on and laughing at it,"[149] or it was the Smithfield officers deputed
to cut swords of improper length, who pounced upon the French ambassador
because his sword was longer than the statutes allowed. "He was in a
great fury.... Her Majestie is greatly offended with the officers, in
that they wanted judgement."[150]
There was also a dislike of the whole new order of things, of which the
fashion for travel was only a phase: dislike of the new courtier who
scorned to live in the country, surrounded by a huge band of family
servants, but preferred to occupy small lodgings in London, and join in
the pleasures of metropolitan life. The theatre, the gambling resorts,
the fence-schools, the bowling alleys, and above all the glamor of the
streets and the crowd were charms only beginning to assert themselves in
Elizabethan England. But the popular voice was loud against the nobles
who preferred to spend their money on such things instead of on
improving their estates, and who squandered on fine clothes what used to
be spent on roast beef for their retainers. Greene's _Quip for an
Upstart Courtier_ parodies what the new and refined Englishman would
say:--
"The worlds are chaungde, and men are growne to more wit, and their
minds to aspire after more honourable thoughts: they were dunces in
diebus illis, they had not the true use of gentility, and therefore they
lived meanely and died obscurely: but now mennes capacities are refined.
Time hath set a new edge on gentlemen's humours and they show them as
they should be: not like gluttons as their fathers did, in chines of
beefe and almes to the poore, but in velvets, satins, cloth of gold,
pearle: yea, pearle lace, which scarce Caligula wore on his
birthday."[151]
On the whole, we may say that the objections to foreign travel rose from
a variety of motives. Ascham doubtless knew genuine cases of young men
spoiled by too much liberty, and there were surely many obnoxious boys
who bragged of their "foreign vices." Insular prejudice, jealousy and
conservatism, hating foreign influence, drew attention to these bad
examples. Lastly, there was another element in the protest against
foreign travel, which grew more and more strong towards the end of the
reign of Elizabeth and the beginning of James the First's, the hatred of
Italy as the stronghold of the Roman Catholic Church, and fear of the
Inquisition. Warnings against the Jesuits are a striking feature of the
next group of Instructions to Travellers.
* * * * *